“’This night job just suited me, as I could have the whole day to myself.  I had the faculty of sleeping in a chair any time for a few minutes at a time.  I taught the night yardman my call, so I could get half an hour’s sleep now and then between trains, and in case the station was called the watchman was to wake me.  One night I got an order to hold a freight train, and I replied that I would do so.  I ran out to find the signal man, but before I could locate him and get the signal set—­the train ran past! I rushed back to the telegraph office and reported that I could not hold it.

“’But on receiving my first message that I would hold the freight, the dispatcher let another train leave the next station going the opposite way.  There was a station near the Junction where the day operator slept.  I started to run in that direction, but it was pitch dark.  I fell down a culvert and was knocked senseless.’

“The two engineers, with a feeling that all was not as it should be, kept a sharp lookout and saw each other just in time to avert a fatal accident.  But young Edison was cited to trial, for gross neglect of duty, by the general manager.  During an informal hearing two Englishmen called on the manager.  While he was talking with them the young night operator disappeared.  Boarding a freight train bound for Port Sarnia, he made his escape from the five-years’ term in prison threatened by the irate manager.  Edison afterward confessed that his heart did not leave his throat until he had crossed the ferry to Port Huron and ’one wide river’ lay between him and the Canadian authorities.

“Following his escape from Canada young Edison knocked about the home country, North and South.  As it was during the Civil War he had some peculiar adventures.  After making a long circuit, broken in many places by ‘short circuits,’ the journeyman telegrapher landed in Port Huron, and wrote his friend Adams, then in Boston to find him a job.

“His friend relates that he asked the Boston manager of the Western Union Telegraph office if he wanted a first-class operator from the West.

“‘What kind of copy does he make?’” was the manager’s first query.  “Adams continues: 

“’I passed Edison’s letter through the window for his inspection.  He was surprised, for it was almost as plain as print, and asked: 

“‘Can he take it off the wire like that?’

“’I said he certainly could, and that there was nobody who could stick him.  He told me to send for my man and I did.  When Edison came he landed the job without delay.’”

“The inventor himself has told the story of his reporting for duty in Boston: 

“’The manager asked me when I was ready to go to work.

“‘Now!’ said I, and was instructed to return at 5:30 P.M., which I did, to the minute.  I came into the operators’ room and was ushered into the night manager’s presence.